Liverpool lead QPR 3-0, it is the last minute of injury time and they have been awarded a penalty in front of the Kop. The demand from 40,000 spectators is for Carragher to sign off his career with a romantic gesture.

Carragher, unsurprisingly, does not do sentiment.

“No chance. I wouldn’t take it,” he says. “Imagine missing that and going for a pint after the game and they’d say you missed a penalty in your last game?

“I’m not really big for that. I’m not the type of person who likes the attention. I just don’t want it to overshadow the game. I just want this to go well and if it doesn’t it’ll annoy me.”

It has been a long goodbye bathed in endless goodwill since Carragher announced imminent retirement in January.

A five-month countdown ends on Sunday, although he has been a red card from goodbye for the past month.

“Before the Fulham game someone texted me and said, ‘don’t get sent off’. I thought, imagine if you end up missing your last game through being suspended so I had a word with Mark Halsey before kick-off,” he admits.

“I just said, ‘If I’m misbehaving get them to bring me off’. He said, ‘Don’t handball it on the line or do a professional foul and you’ll be all right’.”

Half of English football seems to have followed the retirement trend since Carragher. It has offered plentiful opportunities for regret and reconsideration but it has made him more relieved he made his announcement.

Nobody tried to change his mind more than his son James, soon to be the sole Carragher representative at Anfield’s academy.

“When I first told him he did try to stop me,” he said. “It’s the end for him too. He can’t say his dad’s a Liverpool player any more. Monday morning his dad will be just like everyone else. It’ll be more after the game I will be thinking about it.

“I love playing football but I’m looking forward to the end now — doing different things. I have for a while, to seeing how it pans out.

“I’ve been thinking about how I’ll channel my passion. I’ll have to find a five-a-side team or something. All that running around, shouting every day – you get it out of your system. I fancy having a go at squash.”

It is not just Carragher’s playing ability the club will miss. He has not just been the heart and soul of Anfield, but its conscience, fiercely protective of what he considers the club’s values but more prepared than most to identify its flaws.

Now the break will be clean. He may avoid Anfield completely. “I don’t know how much I will be going to Anfield to watch,” he said. “My son will be going and I will be doing the Sky stuff, but I don’t want to be one of those people who keeps popping up all the time at the ground. You have to be careful.

“If we’re getting beat, or not performing, or someone’s not putting it in, I will be like a fan. I was like that as an Everton fan as a kid, like that as a player, when you’ve got that passion it can’t just go from that to watching.

"I’ve told the lads if they’re not performing they will be getting it. Sometimes as players no one is ever wrong when they say good things about you, but they always are when they say bad stuff – that winds me up.”

Carragher believes Brendan Rodgers will keep Liverpool progressing and the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson also offers hope for the future.

“The Ferguson situation will help in some respects, not just Liverpool, giving everyone an opportunity,” he said. “I like Ferguson because I see someone a little bit like myself in terms of passion. It’s brilliant, to be honest, at that age, to have that passion to win. He’s been a great manager and if you said anything other than that you’d be stupid.

“I think David Moyes is a brilliant manager but he’s not Alex Ferguson yet. He may go on to be that. In Moyes they’ve got the perfect fit really. It’s a really good appointment and it’s good for the league that a British coach has got such a big job. He’s done a really good job at Everton. I wish him well, but not too well.”

How will he want to be remembered? “As someone who was always there and gave his all,” says Carragher. “Home and away, come hail, rain or shine.”

They say you do not know what you have lost until it is gone. That is not true where Carragher is concerned.

Liverpool know exactly what they will be lacking next season. They will never be the same club until they find a way of replacing him.